Studies of the Cardiovascular System in the Hypotension of Liver Failure

Abstract

AS a result of improvements in treatment of the bleeding, infections and coma complicating severe liver disease it has become relatively common for patients with cirrhosis to die in a state characterized by hypotension, which is not due to bleeding, and by oliguria with a rising blood nonprotein nitrogen concentration.¹, This syndrome may last for a week or more and is an almost certain portent of death. Its pathogenesis is obscure, and hemodynamic measurements have been reported in only a few patients. A patient described by Hecker and Sherlock³ had a high cardiac output and low total peripheral resistance . . .